RIP Jennifer Frey

just busted out crying in a restaurant after finishing the McKenna piece. Not even embarrassed.

 

This quote from the Deadspin piece made me well up for whatever reason.

“I still can’t wrap my arms around her quiet exit and decline,” says Vinnie Perrone, a longtime Washington Post writer who was close to Frey before and during her time at the paper. “She was brilliant, she was a worker, she lit up any room she was in. She knew everybody and was liked by everybody in the business. We were all moths to her porchlight. There was a time when all these people would be glad to see her and be around her. But when the need arose, when she needed people, where were they? Where were we?”

 

Yeah after a couple minutes of reflection it got me too.

 

This ...

Mike Wise used his last audience to remind Frey of that time after a party in her Brooklyn apartment when they were looking out the window at the Statue of Liberty, when she told him life was good and he agreed. Things couldn’t be more different now. When he was alone in the hospital room with Frey, Wise says, she looked at him and said, “This is surreal, isn’t it?” He agreed one last time.

... is this, modernized ...

So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high water mark — that place where the wave finally broke, and rolled back.”

That was a well-spun story. Had to stop a few times.

 

Christ, what a story. That gave me goose bumps reading it.

 

RIP. great story, sad story. (probably should have said great writing)

not sure i'd called Kovalev a goon though.

 

That story was tough. Ugh.

I lost a friend last year to suicide, but it was really drinking, pills and getting behind the financial 8-ball.

 

His ability to tie it into multiple rejections by Georgetown was something else.

Fantastic story, and so sad. It raised more questions than answers--through no fault of the author, how she ended up the way she did is left untold--which is pretty much how life works. We expect but rarely get succinct answers.

 

Having an alcoholic relative in my immediate family always scared me away from booze, knowing that alcoholism is hereditary and I could end up in the same boat. Scary that Jenny was about two weeks older than me. So many sports writers do this that I'm amazed more don't end up in this shape. That's a fantastically written, yet horribly sad piece.

 

I had a similar reaction. It was a great appreciation of her talent and how much people liked her. There was so little about her addiction and her last years, though. I expected more after reading the opening. Probably difficult to get seeing how many people declined to comment.

I didn't like the political take about her mortgage. She was an alcoholic using her home as a credit card. Her situation had little to do with Countrywide and BoA mortgage practices.